Currently, the inability to easily guide light at sub-diffraction limit dimensions prevents the manufacture of ultra-high density photonic circuits. To capture the inherent advantages of large bandwidth, capacity, and high speed modulation, research in the area has been underway for over a decade. While a number of proposed structures like the one-dimensional negative dielectric (Takahara et al., Optics Lett. 22:475 (1997)) and silicon-on-insulator photonic crystal (Bogaerts et al., IEEE J. of Lightwave Technol. 23:401 (2005)) waveguides enable nanoscale signal transmission, challenges with integration and packaging dimensions remain. Alternatively, plasmon excitation through metal nanoparticle arrays presents a method of guiding energy using sub-micron structures. Nominally, the device is made from a 1D array of Ag, Au, or Al nanoparticles self-assembled through sputtering, ion implantation, thermal evaporation, and lift-off (Brongersma et al., Phys. Rev. B, 62:R16356 (2000); Maier et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 4:3990 (2004); and Yatsui et al., Nano Lett. (2005)). Still, negative dielectrics, such as metals, are subject to resistive heating and loss, and require conversion to translate plasmonic to optical energy.
The present invention is directed to overcoming these and other deficiencies in the art.